Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

I'm recycling this post from 2007. This guy put his finger on something:

A group of philosophers sympathetic with the Christian take on things have constructed a complicated and technical account of God beliefs and their source in human cognition known as reformed epistemology. On the view, espoused by Plantinga and Wolterstorff and widely cited and supported in recent years, humans are endowed by God with an innate faculty for sensing God under the right circumstances. This sensus divinitatus is one aspect of a properly functioning cognitive and belief forming system in humans. When it is not corrupted by the invasive noetic effects of sin, this faculty produces a belief in God that is immediate, direct, and non-inferentially justified. That is, a belief in God is properly basic according to the reformed epistemologists. It is not supported by any other independent or more fundamental facts. It cannot be justified on the basis of other beliefs. Rather, it’s axiomatic like the law of non-contradiction or the identity of indiscernibles. The sensus divinitatus will manifest itself in a variety of ways—when you see a sweeping vista of majestic mountaintops, or when your first child is born, or upon pondering the vastness and magnificence of the universe in the night sky.

Misinterpreting these feelings of the divine as indicators of a non-Christian God as a Hindu might, or suppressing them and denying that God is manifest in experience are all the by-products of a sinful nature. Doubters, skeptics, and deniers—anyone who doesn’t buy into the Reformed Epistemology picture—have all had their God given God detectors corrupted, co-opted, and distorted by sin. What they need, of course, is the salvation of Jesus to cleanse them of their immorality and to restore the proper function of their belief faculties. Then they will see that they were not right with God before. And then they will have properly basis religious experience of God. So the view has a the tidy way to deal with criticisms and legitimate objections. No objection to the whole scheme can have any merit because it arises from doubt, which is really just wickedness. If you had some experiences that seemed to have profound religious significance, like any normal person you would wonder about alternative explanations. Could this just be a weird artifact of my neurology? I wonder what natural explanation there could be for this strange disassociation? Maybe I ate something bad? The full-blown theistic supernatural explanation is one possibility. But according to Reformed Epistemology any suspicion that you have that it might have been something natural is really the result of your innately evil nature and the taint that sin has placed on your ability to think straight. They position undercuts any objections with an ad hominem attack on the moral character of the questioner.

The whole scheme is also clever (and insidious) for inventing a notion of private evidence that shouldn’t be held up for any public scrutiny by someone who has doubts. Once you’re in the special club, you’re provided with “self-authenticating witness of the holy spirit” that gives you perfect, unassailable assurance about your God doctrine no matter what empirical questions or doubts may arise. Ordinarily, evidence is something that is sharable and public. The prosecuting attorney displays the gun that was the murder weapon for everyone in the court, the dentist looks at X-rays, and your mechanic points to the leaking oil around a gasket as evidence that there is a problem. But this special God feeling isn’t like that; it’s just a feeling you have that something’s got to be true, so it can’t be shared with anyone else. Plantinga and some of the people in this camp suggest that the earnest Christian in this situation ought to consider alternative explanations for their experience. Many properly basic beliefs, including the God one presumably, are defeasible. If you have the experiences, and if your conviction that that’s really God your feeling persists after you have scrutinized the belief and reflected on what might be causing it, then you will have a warranted, and true belief that there is a God.

Needless to say, the notion of private evidence here is deeply problematic. Imagine an IRS agent telling you that she’s got self-authenticating, private evidence that you can’t see that you owe the government an extra $20,000 tax dollars. Imagine a doctor telling you that she’s got self-authenticating evidence that you’ve got cancer, but the evidence can’t be grasped by anyone who doesn’t already believe it. Or imagine your husband telling you that he’s got special, private, self-authenticating evidence that you’ve been cheating on him. Then suppose furthermore that they assure you that their conclusion is right because they have thought long and hard about it and considered other possibilities. Evidence that's private isn't really evidence at all and a mere feeling that something just must be true, no matter how strong or persistent, is never enough to give it warrant.

Here’s a model of human rationality and religious belief that is much more accurate. Humans are endowed by evolution with a remarkably effective set of problem solving skills that can be group loosely under the general heading “reason.” In the right circumstances, our reason allows us to devise complicated and elegant solutions to challenges, make accurate inferences and predictions, and arrive at many well-justified and true beliefs. We manage to cure diseases like polio and land people on the moon. But our cognitive systems are kludgey and imperfect. They’re strapped together with disparate functions and tools that were available at various stages in a long, convoluted evolutionary history. Sometimes they don’t track the truth at all, like when you have an attack of claustrophobia, or you can’t bear to even look at a dish that once made you sick when you were a child. Sometimes our cognitive faculties overreact, mislead, underestimate, or misjudge.

Our fancier faculties of reason are also often overwhelmed by a variety of emotional, psychological, and biological forces that erode our ability to reason well and see the truth. One legacy of our evolutionary history appears to be a powerful disposition towards religious belief, experiences, and feelings. Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker have recently argued that natural selection may have endowed us with a sort of mind-attribution module. Construing other organisms behavior as the product of the planning and goals within their minds, whether they really have them or not, would be an effective mechanism for anticipating and projecting the behaviors of potential predators and prey. But we’re just built to take it too far and endow everything with a mind—the wind, the ocean, the starry sky, and the world itself.

In an earlier post, I called it the Urge—a powerful and seductive need we have to be religious. Completely aside from the factual question of God, it is obvious to anyone who observes humans and their religious activities that we desperately want there to be a God and we will adopt the most contorted gymnastics of reasoning to rationalize the belief. Even if there are some theists with good reasons, there are far more with sloppy, fallacy ridden, biased grounds that they offer for their beliefs. And in lots of these cases, it’s not really the poor reasoning that is offered in defense of someone’s God belief that led them to believe at all. More often it is the case that people have the belief first as a result of the Urge’s infiltration of their consciousness, and then they back fill that conclusion with some superficial reasons. So the Urge is really the dark side of your nature that threatens to corrupt your more noble aspects. It’s the alluring, siren call of religion itself, not sin, that will co-opt reason’s ability to see the world in an accurate light.

Staying on the straight and narrow will require resisting the temptation of religion’s easy, emotionally satisfying answers to the biggest metaphysical questions. Living up to your potential to reason clearly and evaluate the evidence objectively demands that you be constantly vigilant against seduction of religion’s false comforts.

7 comments:

"Misinterpreting these feelings of the divine as indicators of a non-Christian God as a Hindu might, or suppressing them and denying that God is manifest in experience are all the by-products of a sinful nature."

I wasn't aware that he said this about Hindus. Do you remember where you read Plantinga say that?

"Imagine an IRS agent telling you that she’s got self-authenticating, private evidence that you can’t see that you owe the government an extra $20,000 tax dollars. Imagine a doctor telling you that she’s got self-authenticating evidence that you’ve got cancer, but the evidence can’t be grasped by anyone who doesn’t already believe it. Or imagine your husband telling you that he’s got special, private, self-authenticating evidence that you’ve been cheating on him."

It seems many atheists take something like the self-authenticating view when they claim we should believe in real moral properties, and what they are.

The fact is science and our senses is not comprehensive enough basis to explain everything we think is part of reality.

"In an earlier post, I called it the Urge—a powerful and seductive need we have to be religious. Completely aside from the factual question of God, it is obvious to anyone who observes humans and their religious activities that we desperately want there to be a God and we will adopt the most contorted gymnastics of reasoning to rationalize the belief. "

Replace with "religious" with "moral." And replace "God" with "real moral properties." And you have the same explanation for what many atheists (perhaps even yourself?) believe.

I think you do not realize how close Christians and Atheists who are inclined to believe in real moral properties are.

Look in the mirror:

"In an earlier post, I called it the Urge—a powerful and seductive need we have to be moral. Completely aside from the factual question of real moral properties, it is obvious to anyone who observes humans and their moral activities that we desperately want there to be a real moral properties and we will adopt the most contorted gymnastics of reasoning to rationalize the belief. "

I also tend not to think this is an example of ad hominem. At least not a classic one. I admit it is an interesting question whether it is though.

I think your comments against the arguments presented against the defense lawyer and the politician who is paid by a special interest is closer to an Ad Hominem. There you admit the arguments seem fairly detailed but then seem to discount them due to the fact the people are paid to make them.

"It seems many atheists take something like the self-authenticating view when they claim we should believe in real moral properties, and what they are... I think you do not realize how close Christians and Atheists who are inclined to believe in real moral properties are."

Who are the atheists who believe in self-authenticating moral properties? I've no doubt that there are some atheists who think of moral properties as queer Platonic existants standing outside of the natural causal order, and perhaps their epistemology would have to be similar to that of reformed epistemology. But many atheistic moral objectivists believe that moral properties reduce to or are supervenient upon natural properties. So there many atheists for whom the knowledge of moral properties is reducible to knowledge of the natural order, coupled with usual linguistic knowledge of when and where our terms are applicable. Such ethical naturalists can freely criticize the idea of self-authenticating witness without hypocrisy - your tu quoque misses a large number of atheist critics, who I believe, actually form the vast majority of atheistic moral objectivists.

"Who are the atheists who believe in self-authenticating moral properties?"

I said "It seems many atheists take something like the self-authenticating view"

So I am not saying they use the exact same terminology. But they are doing something very similar.

Peter Singer is one who pretty clearly thinks moral properties are self evident. But really read any atheistic moral realist and you will not see the sort of empirical evidence that proves real moral properties exist, that many atheists demand about God.

Naturalistic moral theories claim that morals facts just supervene on natural facts. But they provide no empirical proof of this. They obviously can't provide any empirical evidence that this set of facts has a moral fact supervene because they only acknowledge the moral fact.

Whether their is any real morality going on in the case is still completely unproven by any empirical evidence.

Instead you will have a different sort of argument. These arguments are often much more similar to the types of arguments we have for God.

Yes you are right. There are many atheist philosophers who reject real morals. They can make these sorts of arguments against theists without living by a double standard. Richard Joyce is one such philosopher and you sort of refer to Mackie's queerness argument who would be another. But in rejecting moral realism they have problems of their own.

In all of this my point is not to say anyone is irrational. I don't think the atheists who try to justify a real moral basis are irrational. I don't think the atheists who basically reject real morality are irrational. I don't think Christians who accept the Christian morality and defend it are irrational either.

My point is that we have precious little information that pertains to very fundamental questions. Namely 1) How should we live our lives? and for whatever we think on that 2)What ultimate basis do we have for believing that?

Professor McCormick has an air of certainty and arrogance when addressing Christian beliefs. But I don't see that he has set out his own views on these very basic questions.

I think if people are knowledgeable about meta ethics and the problems presented in the literature regarding these questions then they will tend to be much more charitable to others views. I don't think anyone who studies these issues in depth believes that everything in reality works just how they would expect it if their model was true.

I think one of the major disconnects between Professor McCormick and several other anti-theistic atheists is that their understanding of religion was really focused on certain evangelical beliefs about science.

So they tend to think that rejecting religion has to do with rejecting certain anti-science views. However I don't really think most Christians believe that Jesus or Scripture was written to teach science. It was written to teach morality.

Christians before they were called Christians were called followers of "the way." So Christianity is very much a way of life not primarily a set of beliefs about science.

This is why several Christians look at the back and forth between evangelicals and former evangelicals (who are now anti-theists) and wonder what they are doing.

I understand people need to make a living. And some anti-theists might see publishing books/blogs that are divisive and invoke emotional responses is more profitable than arguments that leave that behind for unemotional logic and reason. We all need to make a living. But I don't think that is the proper way to reason through these issues.

"But really read any atheistic moral realist and you will not see the sort of empirical evidence that proves real moral properties exist, that many atheists demand about God."

Atheistic moral realists not providing empirical evidence of their view is not the same as their taking a self-authenticating view of moral properties. You're not entitled to draw that conclusion on the basis of what you haven't found in what you've read of them. And in fact, your demand for empirical evidence is odd. The main work to do here is for them to show that there is no difference in moral properties without a difference also in natural properties, and that therefore moral properties can be 'read-off' from all the familair natural features of a situation. But that is conceptual work. What empirical investigation there is follows on from there, and is of the unproblematic kind - identifying ordinary natural properties which the moral properties are supposed to reduce to or supervene on.

"Richard Joyce is one such philosopher and you sort of refer to Mackie's queerness argument who would be another."

Interesting that you mention Joyce. He claims that a moral prescription gives a moral agent a reason-for-action so powerful, it overrides any practical considerations the agent might have against the prescribed behavior and renders disobedience irrational. Many atheistic moral realists reject this view - they then need to explain what is seductive about it, even if it is false, but they do not have the burden of showing that such moral properties exist as could determine certain actions as rationally required regardless of the desires or beliefs a moral agent has.

"I think if people are knowledgeable about meta ethics and the problems presented in the literature regarding these questions then they will tend to be much more charitable to others views. I don't think anyone who studies these issues in depth believes that everything in reality works just how they would expect it if their model was true. "

Yes, meta-ethics is hard, and I agree that grappling with it does and should instill epistemic humility - but only about meta-ethical issues, not necessarily about any other field of inquiry. I don't see why the Professor should be less forceful in his arguments for atheism just because he lacks decisive arguments on a matter he considers to be unrelated.

"However I don't really think most Christians believe that Jesus or Scripture was written to teach science. It was written to teach morality."

Reading this makes me wonder what then is special in the Christian worldview, as you see it. Is the bible then no different from an ethical treatise, having no greater authority than the strength of its arguments and the indubitability of its axioms? If so, then it is at best a minor tract, overly long and full of details which are irrelevant to its proper purpose, and probably not worth the time of non-specialists.

No, I don't think this is what Christians believe. They believe that the Bible is special, and this can only be because it contains historical facts which describe the role of the supernatural in human affairs. If the morality found therein is worthy of our attention it is because it is endorsed by a supernatural authority, who is wiser and more powerful than ourselves. But these supposed historical facts disagree with the picture of reality drawn by science, and adherence to them requires us to flout the epistemic principles which scientists have settled on in coming to their conclusions about what is true. So, there really is a conflict here, even if the moderate Christian is not and does not want to be an active participator.

Thanks for your response. But I would just point out that you are intent on rephrasing what I said in a misleading way. If you just focus on what I actually say and then try to address that I think our conversation will be more fruitful.

For example I say:"It seems many atheists take something like the sellf-authenticating view when they claim we should believe in real moral properties, and what they are..."

You then ask:

"Who are the atheists who believe in self-authenticating moral properties?"

To which I respond:

"I said "It seems many atheists take something like the self-authenticating view"

So I am not saying they use the exact same terminology. But they are doing something very similar."

I also give you an example of a popular atheist who does this, Peter Singer, but you ignore that. And you again say:

"Atheistic moral realists not providing empirical evidence of their view is not the same as their taking a self-authenticating view of moral properties..."

So again I am not saying it is the same. But it is *something like it*. Both groups claim their view can be rationally held without any empirical evidence supporting it.

I mentioned Peter Singer just as an example and you ignored that.

There are, of course, several others. Your ignorance of their existence and writings does not mean they are not many in number. Russ Shafer-landau is another moral realist who is also a non naturalist. He happens to https://sites.google.com/site/shaferlandau/homeMichael Huemer and other who subscribe to moral Intuitionism provide many other examples.

Moral intuitionism is a view that although moral facts are at based not inferred from evidence they nevertheless can be reliable and are epistemologically legitimate.

I could go on but you also could just read any introduction to metaethics and you will see that there is no real ground to think vast majority of atheistic moral realists are moral naturalists like you suggest.

Thats not to say that Moral naturalism doesn't have major problems either. It does.

I say I think the bible and Jesus teach not science but morality. I think the vast majority of Christians would agree with me.

But then you go on to mischaracterize what I said into something that I agree most Christians would not agree with. I wouldn't agree with it either! Is that really getting us anywhere? If you address the comments I actually make instead of your misrepresentations of what I said I think the conversation might be clearer and we will be more likely to get somewhere.

Richard Joyce is an error theorist when it comes to morals. He might think our *beliefs* about morals are strong motivators. But he thinks all claims about things being morally wrong or morally justified are false, in that they claim to correspond with reality but in fact do not.

These issues are complicated because many people are trying to save morality and let go of God.

This is why:

"In an earlier post, I called it the Urge—a powerful and seductive need we have to be moral. Completely aside from the factual question of real moral properties, it is obvious to anyone who observes humans and their moral activities that we desperately want there to be a real moral properties and we will adopt the most contorted gymnastics of reasoning to rationalize the belief. "

You want more contorted gymnastics? Keeping morality without God can deliver on the moral front we also have "quasi realists." Yep another meta-ethical view.

Again my point is not to say the work these philosophers do is irrational. Not at all.

"Yes, meta-ethics is hard, and I agree that grappling with it does and should instill epistemic humility - but only about meta-ethical issues, not necessarily about any other field of inquiry. I don't see why the Professor should be less forceful in his arguments for atheism just because he lacks decisive arguments on a matter he considers to be unrelated. "

Well Christianity and meta-ethics are not unrelated. The professor might think they are and I even gave an explanation of why he thinks they are. That is his exposure to Christianity was through a small sect of evangelicalism that emphasized the supposed scientific claims of christianity versus the moral claims of Christianity much more than the majority of other Christians.

But regardless if he wants to criticize religious thinkers for accepting non-inferential beliefs but turn a blind eye to his fellow atheist thinkers who do the same this is a double standard.

We see this double standard on this blog in just about every post. Either take your epistemic standards and apply them equally to theists and atheists alike or admit you are just ranting about your biased views.

My book is out:

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Atheism

Author:

Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.